Thursday, July 24, 2008

I'll probably get around to blogging about this in Cockpit Chronicles next month, but I wanted to share this with you here first.

Not many pilots (myself included) have ever seen Noctilucent clouds before. But what started out looking like Northern Lights turned out to be these Noctilucent clouds which reach an altitude of 300,000 feet.

Read about them here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noctilucent_cloud

I have video to go along with this picture. It's great to hear the other pilots asking about these clouds on the North Atlantic air-to-air frequency. Judging by the comments, it was obvious that most of us had never run across these before.

This photo is almost exactly how it looked to us. I had to use a slow shutter with a high ISO to capture it on Monday night, July 21st, 2008.

Amazing, Kent! Noctilucents were really spectacular that summer. I took a shot of it from my hometown: http://kukanotas.deviantart.com/art/Noctilucent-Clouds-08-06-26-89924683Of course, view from the best place in the world (the cockpit) is waaay better. I'd really like to see those views from my office. Someday, someday.. :)